such jerk - hated him. Go back to Brown!!

This was the most frustrating class of my life. Duval is not helpful at all and he seems to have no idea that this is a beginners level course.

He is very disorganized. He tries to fit way too much into the lab periods, which leaves the students with extra work. His classes don't teach you necessary skills for the problem sets/tests. The tests from previous years we did in labs were way easier than his test, and therefore did not prepare you at all. Because of him, I am not majoring in CS.

Nothing more to say than terrible. There is NO help with this class no matter where you go. If you have no experience with coding, don't take this class. I felt like all of the kids were gamers in there.. it should not have been an intro class. He does nothing to teach material.. just shows you more "efficient" ways of doing it.

I am an undecided freshman, and I was considering majoring in compsci. However, this man has drained all the passion I had for the subject from me. Too many times have I been huddled in a room with a group of friends as we try to learn the basic concepts behind the subject all by ourselves. We basically didn't have a teacher, and he is not funny

This class. There are days where even the TAs in lab don't know what were learning. I had to use past instructions from former teachers to understand what to do in projects. Midterms were even more unclear and 10x harder than midterms from the past. The stress from that class was very unnecessary, I had to set up a meeting with CAPS for my sanity.

Professor Duvall took a class that in the past has been very manageable and interesting and turned it into a class that is impossible for students to follow and had expectations that were absurd. He made exams way too difficult and didn't teach anything in the lectures. The TAs had almost as little idea of what was going on as Duvall did. 0/10.

Amazing

Software design is important, but Duvall teaches nothing about it in lecture. The projects are a ton of work, but they are just boring and tedious. Don't take this class for the "practical experience". No employer will care about your JavaFX applications. If you are signed up for 308, drop it and take a more important class like 310 or 330.

Software design and maintainability is extremely important- however Duvall does a terrible job teaching more advanced design concepts, although the readings are pretty good. The amount that you learn is not worth the effort you put in- most people who say this is a good class are bad at coding. Don't take this class.

Very Hard Class. TONS OF WORK. :(

If I could, I would give him a 0/5. Horrible class. You're expected to learn everything by your own in your own time. If you really want to learn web dev, you might as well learn by yourself because Duvall sure won't teach you. Oh, and half of the TAs also don't know how to do most of the projects. One week per project + unclear grading criteria.

Feedback was utterly nonexistent. Of the maybe 20 assignments/labs in the course, we got feedback on no more than 4, and he would actively ignore requests for feedback on Piazza. Then, final grades were a full week late. He seems like a nice enough guy, but his organization is inexcusable.

Easy class if you already know some webdev and need to boost gpa + can pick up a new framework. Duvall is awful tho. Every single lecture/lab is from the documentation of that weeks language/framework as if hes learning them for the first time too (he might be). Never explains any theory, just the basics of implementation (off the tutorials).

Extremely unorganized professor. Expect him to release assignments late and then claim he released it days before and reject any of the students' attempts to ask for an extension. Also expect massively unclear grading criterions. Finally, he discourages people to contribute to class discussions by putting people down sarcastically for that.

Prepare yourself to work with self-proclaimed coding prodigies who throw in as many buzzwords as possible to emulate the software master, Robert Duvall. If the kids who take this class weren't insufferable enough, Robert is a playground bully who talks down to anyone who dares ask him such pedestrian questions. This class makes ECE/CS not worth it

The only grade you ever receive is your final grade. Also, the rubric on the website is purposely confusing so you dont know what exactly hes looking for. Due dates are unclear, and the lectures give no new insights. If you want to learn whats taught in this class, it would be more rewarding to just search it online or do an internship.

All the skills you learn are mainly self-taught, could be learned in a couple of YouTube tutorials, and gained because of the immense pressure we are thrown under. There are no mental health breaks at all as you move from project to project, and despite what he says about bad groups, you have to make up for it on your own. This class was horrible.

This guy is the reason I opened a RateMyProfessors account. An absolutely horrible professor that sucks all the fun out of coding and is rude towards his students. The biggest issue is that he does not realize people have other work to do and creates countless pointless assignments. Do NOT take this course!

Extremely terrible. Not supportive. Acts like everyone who dares to ask questions are idiots, but then expect everything from us. Some of my teammates described him as "mean", and others say he's more like a "boss" than a professor. Well, we don't get paid for this class but expect more work than you'll get in even the most work-heavy internship

I've gone through internships at two FANG companies before taking this class. So I know what a heavy workload at a tech company could look like. However, he fails to consider that we may have three other classes that have work as well. He acts as if we're all just taking his one class in university and treats this class as our full-time job.

I entered to tag above sarcastically. Definitely the least caring professor ever. The class material is ok but literally any other professor would have done a better job than him. If you take this class just make sure you're mentally prepared for a bad experience. Wish there were better options for this important topic at Duke.

Take a class with Duvall only if you are looking to get the life force sucked out of you. One of the worst professors I've had in my 4yrs of undergrad. Do not expect to learn much if anything. His lecture are boring, he keeps on droning, doesn't respect students. On the positive side, he makes sure you are up to deadlines and follows up personally.

Senior lecturer Mr. Duvall would roast terrible code instead of displaying good code in the weekly quizzes. You are expected to do pretty much everything in a full-time internship, but constantly chastised. Expect upwards of 10 hours a week doing pointless tasks and 30 hours a week doing the project. -400/5 Worst instructor I've had in my life.

Duvall doesn't provide feedback throughout the course until he wants to berate the teams for an hour straight. And it's not constructive criticism, just criticism. I learned nothing, except that if my burndown charts look like a cliff instead of a straight downward line then I've failed the agile community.

We have a shortened semester. Instead of doing what a "normal" professor would do in a class like 307 (e.g. better grading criteria, one less project or cut back on unnecessary crap), he goes the opposite direction. The expectations are the same, the project requirements are the same, we have more pointless assignments, but you just have less time.

Duvall is a terrible professor. I don't know how he's teaching the course when he has literally no software engineering experience. He doesn't even have a PhD. Expects a ton of work every week (upwards of 30-40 hours a week). It's like an internship in terms of commitment, but you don't get paid. Do yourself a favor and avoid him at all costs

he assigned a final presentation and final paper during reading period and finals week on top of the final project we spent 100 hours on in already hellish online semester. he genuinely has no idea that students have other final exams and final papers. i cannot fathom how he is still able to teach

By far the worst teacher I've had at Duke. He is extremely rude to students, literally made me despise programming even though I loved it before taking this class. He only criticizes people, and not in a helpful way. I swear he is only a professor so he can look down on students and pretend he knows what he's talking about. Honestly should be fired

Terrible. Expect to work > 20 hours/week for this class and learn very little.

Awful. Spent about 80 hours on a three-week project, then had to write an analysis about it that was longer than most papers for a humanities class.

Do not take a class with this professor. He is inconsiderate, condescending, and not a good instructor.

The course material is interesting, but the majority of the lectures are not helpful. There has also been a big issue with grading. We have had 5 projects for the course and he has only graded the first project, which we submitted the first week of February. So we have no idea whether or not we are doing things correctly or what our grades are.

I saw the poor reviews below before taking this course, but thought it couldn't possibly be that bad and signed up anyway. Don't make the same mistake I did. He is that bad

Absolutely the worst. Absurd amount of work (30-40 hours a week) for an elective. He won't take work later than 1 day, but has only given grades for 1/8 projects (class ends in a week). Condescending and full of himself. Incredibly unclear grading criteria. Some code examples in class didn't even work and the TA had to fix them days later.

provides zero feedback or grades on projects so i have no idea what my grade is! made a group final project (40% of grade) into a solo project so way more work now. couldve done less work AND learned more thru coursera. STAY AWAY! dont think ur a smartass reading these comments and thinking ur special, cuz thats what i did and i really regret it.

Never got any grades throughout the entire semester. Very rude and condescending ending towards students. Lectures were not very helpful. Most of the learning for CS290 was done through analyzing his example code, Piazza or office hours. TAs were not great either. If you're interested in web development, maybe just teach yourself.

Please dont take this class! The entire setup of the course makes it impossible to learn what he is trying to teach. Why setup a class on software design to have projects each with an impossible amount of features to implement? The amount of work required is absurd and made an isolated college experience in the midst of a pandemic even worse.������

Prof. Duvall is incredibly condescending in his demeanor, and his lectures are completely ineffective. Several amounted to nothing more than a "chewing out" of teams that had failed to pay tithe to the self-appointed "God of Agile" whom, afaik, has never worked a day in the industry in his life. Project feedback is infrequent and of poor quality.

Beyond what others have said: The lectures lack structure and his exceptions can often be unclear. You won't have a clue what your grade is until after the end of semester. I know multiple people who dropped either ECE or CS in order to avoid this class along with CS 330. With that said, the class does give you things to talk about in interviews.

Started well, but it became clear he struggles to connect with students. Though he tried to be accessible to us, his lectures were long and pointless, the work was tedious or difficult, and prior computer science experience became almost essential. I did not enjoy attending this class and will likely not take another CS course because of it.

I had to sign up for CAPs after this class. No feedback/grading until you receive a surprise final grade. Senior Lecturer Duvall is condescending and single-handedly snuffs out the hopes of the ECE/CS. Impossible workload. This is a course where you can give it your full 20 hr+ a week best effort and end with a surprise B. Do not take.

Grades were arbitrary and only given for a very few number of assignments. You are better served learning this material from an internship or work than in this class.

I thought he was rather disorganized and didn't tell us about assignments that were on class websites.

No feedback, unclear grading criteria. Communication skills very subpar. Good programmer but very bad instructor

Never received a grade until the end of the course. No assessments or graded projects so was left in the dark about grading the entire time.

I learned a good bit in this course, but almost all of what I learned was from the projects where I taught myself how to do them. In theory, the class is a great concept, but Professor Duvall did not provide feedback on any projects or presentations, nor did he provide grades (aside from the final grade). He also did not really teach much.